30 Years Later, the Mac Is Mostly Screen

As Apple’s indomitable line of Mac computers turns 30 today, we decided to look at how much it’s changed over the years, particularly how the screen has grown while the rest of the all-in-one computer has diminished in size.

Still, after a little bit of math, we were surprised to see how a sizeable screen has been a key feature since Day One.

On Jan. 24, 1984, the original Mac — the Macintosh 128K — went on sale at a price of $2,495. When looking at the first Mac head on, 33% of the view (keyboard and mouse none withstanding) was display.

In 1998, Apple released its first iMac, which was not only a blockbuster seller, but a desktop that reinvented the beige box, and showed the world how fashionable a computer could be. During its lifetime, the original iMac’s iconic outer shell of semi-translucent plastic sold in 13 different colors — or as Apple liked to say, “flavors.” On the face of the original iMac, 67% was devoted to the screen.

The iMac G4 replaced the candy-coated Macs in 2002 with a new design that looked a lot more like a lamp than a PC. The iMac G4 was also the first iMac to introduce an LCD monitor, with a display that occupied 48% of the face of the device.

Apple followed up the lamp iMac with a new design in 2004 that is a stylistic forefather to today’s iMac. The iMac G5 stuck with an LCD display but moved the guts of the computer from the machine’s base to behind the screen — which is why this generation of desktop was a bit hulking. The iMac G5′s screen took up 55% of the front-facing view.

Unsurprisingly, the display of the contemporary iMac dominates the view. If you look at the top-of-the-line 27-inch model dead on, 70% of what you see are the multitude of pixels that make up its LED-backlit display.